The north side of Portland, Oregon, in the late 1800s was the scene of a violent, raucous waterfront, where illicit cargoes from Asia were offloaded, drunken sailors “shanghaied,” the brothels were always busy, and dark opium dens offered escape from the burdens of life. The profits from all these vices—including the smuggling of illegal immigrants from China—flowed to the elegant south side of town. In this next episode we’ll travel to the docks, whiskey joints, opium dens, and boarding...

Diamond necklaces, rings, and other expensive baubles were an irresistible attraction to the light-fingered burglars who preyed on the wealthy winter visitors to Miami Beach in its early days. One particularly light-fingered jewel thief became the arch-villain of this elegant resort scene. Even after his arrest and imprisonment, the enormous hauls of jewels lifted by this sly criminal kept his legend alive. The stylish winter playground of Miami Beach in the Roaring Twenties and 1930s—a...

Who dreamt up the stunt of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel? Through the 1800s, countless daredevils and would-be heroes attempted all sorts of stunts at the Falls and in the rapids below. But the first to go over the Falls—and survive—did not fit the usual mold of a thrill-seeking daredevil. She was a 63-year-old music teacher named Annie Edson Taylor, who quickly became a national celebrity. Niagara Falls is many things: a heart-pounding source of power, an old-fashioned honeymoon...

The great explorer Henry Hudson was determined to discover a Northwest Passage to the riches of Asia through the frigid bay in North America that still bears his name. Hudson’s voyages of exploration are viewed as pioneering triumphs. But in this episode, we’ll tell the tale of his last, fateful mission—a dangerous and obsessive expedition into uncharted waters that ended in terror, violence, and mutiny—and an enduring mystery. In the Great Age of Discovery, the frigid waters of Hudson’s...

Were 70 jugs of dark liquid discovered in a storeroom of an abandoned Saint Paul hospital startling evidence of an ingenious Prohibition-era scheme? Clues lead to a small cosmetics company accused of bootlegging cheap alcohol-based fragrances into drinkable booze. Their guilt or innocence was never proven. Do the 70 jugs of cheap perfume offer a clue to a Prohibition-era mystery? Saint Paul, Minnesota, was a notorious haven for gangsters and bootleggers, thanks to a corrupt arrangement...

The series of violent events that erupted in southern Appalachia in the 1870s and 80s, known as the “Hatfield-McCoy Feud,” evokes stereotypes of backwoods blood feuds and caricatured “hillbillies” with loaded shotguns. This episode will offer a very different version of the Hatfield-McCoy story that uncovers clues to the real reason for the feud and how the caricatured image of the hillbilly was born. The rugged borderland between West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky are famous for its rich...

The elegant entrance to Delmonico’s restaurant in Lower Manhattan still welcomes billionaires, politicians, and visiting VIPs. It was here in the early 1800s that the upscale American restaurant was born. But the telltale clues contained in an early printed menu reveal how the name “Delmonico’s” also became a familiar brand name for eat-and-run lunchrooms for New York’s working poor. Just a few blocks away from the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, the frenetic hub of the economic...

On an isolated farm just outside LaPorte, Indiana, some unspeakable acts took place in the early 1900s. They remained deep and deadly secrets until a package of love letters was discovered in an immigrant’s cabin in South Dakota—letters that revealed the shockingly murderous intent of a widowed farm wife named Belle Gunness. Local rumors had it that the Gunness farm, in rural northern Indiana, had a macabre history of misfortune, tragedy, and suicide. But no one expected that all the...

Britt is a mecca for hobos — wanderers and boxcar riders with names like “Railroad Randy” and “50-Tooth Slim.” Every August they gather and swap stories about their rambling lives that ironically reflect changing American visions of home. The National Hobo Convention convenes in Britt, Iowa the second week every August, bringing together a colorful assembly of hitchhikers, rail riders, ramblers, and roamers from all over the United States. Since the late 1800s, the figure of the hobo—with...

Did vampires roam the swamps and forests of early New England? A grotesquely vandalized grave discovered in the small town of Griswold, Connecticut, revealed a ghoulish secret that had been concealed for almost 200 years.  The small town of Griswold, Connecticut, settled in the late 1690s by farmers from Massachusetts and Rhode Island seeking a life free from strict Puritan religious restraints, conceals a gruesome secret. The sudden unexpected discovery of human remains in a sand and gravel...

The graceful spiral staircase in the Loretto Chapel ascends weightlessly from the floor to the choir loft rising a total height of almost twenty-five feet. Not a single nail was used in its construction; it lacks any central support. Built in 1881, it still evokes wonder. What is the secret of its miraculous design? Featured in the 1930s as one of the world’s great enigmas by “Ripley’s Believe It or Not,”hundreds of thousands of the faithful and the merely curious journey to the chapel to...

At the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, site of the final resting place of Abraham Lincoln, a gang of bumbling counterfeiters plotted to steal the President’s body. The plot quickly became a ghoulish comedy of errors, largely forgotten in the annals of American history. The Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, the site of the final resting place of Abraham Lincoln, was the site of one of the most bizarre Secret Service operations in history. The body of the savior of...

Is this bizarre, rambling Victorian mansion haunted by the spirits of gunshot victims—and by the ghost of an eccentric heiress who inherited both a fortune and a curse? A closer look at hidden facts of the mansion’s history reveals a different tale. The Winchester Mystery House just south of San Jose, California, has been a popular and spooky tourist attraction since it opened to the public in 1923. By now the story is familiar to the thousands of visitors who experience the otherworldly...

Ghosts still inhabit the site of “Custer’s Last Stand.” The responsibility for the bloody encounter has long been a matter of bitter debate. Explore some surprising evidence that casts the event in a totally new light. In the middle of the Crow Indian Reservation in southeast Montana stands a solid stone house that has seen its share of ghostly happenings. Mysterious lights, creaking footsteps, doorknobs mysteriously turning, sudden shrieks, and doors slamming—even the terrifying...

Like a shapeshifter, ever-changing her imagined character and physical appearance, the spirit of Marie Laveau refuses to fade away. In New Orleans’s famously eerie St. Louis Cemetery #1, you may recognize a past that you have made for yourself. In the eerie St. Louis Cemetery #1 in New Orleans, one particular mausoleum wears its sterile image uneasily. Now hidden beneath a thick coat of plaster are hundreds of X’s marking secret prayers for love, death, and revenge — fervent supplications to...

Gooey death and destruction is no laughing matter. Follow the tragic chain of events that led corporate greed for war profiteering to devastate a crowded immigrant neighborhood. In this episode, our Place of Legend is now a public playground just off busy Commercial Street in Boston, where a small green plaque affixed to a low wall near the public bocce court tells of the “Great Molasses Flood” in exceptionally unemotional terms. Blaming the disaster on “structural defects” in the storage...